Coming Up Clutch

Chapter One

Stay in your legs. Don’t forget to breathe.

Razor willed her heart to slow. The beats grew farther apart.

She closed her eyes. Deep inhale, long exhale.

She was there in the space between sounds—that was where the calm lived.

Razor opened her eyes. The red light flicked on. She tightened her grip and waited.

A bright yellow ball launched at her, rotating in a nonsymmetrical spin, a very familiar rotation that meant the ball dropped sharply before the plate.

Razor choked up on the bat, planted her left foot firmly on the turf, and pushed her momentum forward.

Hands, barrel, head were in perfect alignment.

Then, a slight twitch in her shoulder and her head came up too early.

The ball glanced off the metal bat and trickled to the hole at the bottom of the cage.

She growled, frustrated. After five years of owning a batting cage and coaching on proper hitting technique, you’d think she’d know to keep her body and head in line with the swing.

The red light came on again, and Razor refocused. This time, her head stayed parallel to her bat. Her hands stayed back behind the bat head, and she propelled the ball into the air. Perfect execution.

She continued hitting for the next fifteen minutes.

When the light clicked off the final time, she dropped the bat to the turf and leaned heavily on the knob.

Noises faded into her consciousness once again.

Machines whirred, metal hit leather with a distinct ping, children laughed enthusiastically, and nineties country music filtered through the speaker system.

Behind her was a low murmur of conversation, and she turned to a group of young girls looking and whispering in awe.

“If you want to learn to hit home runs,” Razor said, making eye contact with each girl in turn, “I hold a hitting clinic every Saturday at one.” The girls sprinted away in search of their parents.

Razor laughed. She remembered her own eagerness at that age to hit a home run and knew the parents were in trouble.

“Okay, Jimmy,” she shouted. “This machine is ready to go.”

Jimmy, her right-hand man and assistant manager, gave his signatory thumbs-up and made his way toward the pavilion.

Razor stored the bat in a metal cylinder outside the cage, a recent addition after she nearly twisted her ankle tripping over a bunch of bats strewn across the floor.

She removed her batting gloves and plopped them into her helmet, then ran a hand through her hair, shaking out the strands and trying to tame the thick mane into something presentable after being matted down.

She gave up and pushed her unruly hair behind her ears as she looked on in earnest at a parent biting their nails, willing their child to contact the ball.

Judging by the small stature, the child was five or six years old, and Razor knew this was their first time in the cage.

Razor’s face broke into a smile, still in disbelief at how much had changed since her mom first opened Slugfest.

Even at thirteen, Razor was skeptical when her mother took on such a risky business venture.

A batting cage in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas—population 5,500—didn’t really say success.

But Maggie Mitchell didn’t shy away from a challenge.

“When the right moment comes along, you have to embrace it,” she’d say.

Over the years, she made improvements when funds were available.

When the new interstate was announced, her mom looked relieved.

“Talk about coming up clutch,” she’d said, and it truly was a clutch moment.

Up until then, Slugfest had been scraping by.

Now with a more direct, faster route to the small town, her mom’s business became a hub for the surrounding communities’ sports teams, a destination rather than a detour.

Soon she had enough money to update the machines and netting and even put in wall-to-wall artificial turf that rivaled the facility in the relative metropolis of Jonesboro just twenty minutes down the road.

Everything was going great, and Razor had grand designs of coming back and helping her mom once she graduated from San Diego State.

Then came the diagnosis and a negative prognosis. Her mom struggled to keep the doors open in between appointments and treatments. Luckily, her lifelong friend Jimmy came on and took over. And when Razor returned home, he stayed on to help.

Razor had thought about selling Slugfest after her mother’s death, but she couldn’t let go of her mother’s dream.

Turned out to be the smartest decision she ever made because it saved her from crippling sorrow.

In a way, Slugfest became a haven. Razor wanted all athletes to have the feeling of safety every time they walked through the door, not just a place to fulfill their physical needs, but also to care for their mental health.

It’s what her mom would’ve wanted, and it was the next step in the evolution of Slugfest.

Razor reached the end of the cage line and laughed as Jimmy contorted his tall, lanky frame around the metal scaffolding, trying not to hit the bars with his head. She shook her head and leaned through the doorway.

“You know, it’s no trouble for me to come back there and help,” she yelled.

Jimmy’s arm got stuck behind a pipe, then he turned his body sideways, dislodging the appendage before answering. “And lose another hat? I’d rather have you out there hitting line drives at my head, thank you.”

She rolled her eyes, pretending to be annoyed about an incident that still sort of embarrassed her, two years later.

“I got you a new hat.”

Jimmy squeezed his way out of the opening and pulled off said hat. “Yeah, and I’m still trying to break it in.” He emphasized his statement by bending the bill into submission before putting it back on his head.

Razor held up her hands in surrender and noticed the time on her watch. “Oh shit, it’s almost time for my class. Take care of this for me, please.” She handed him her helmet, then took off in the opposite direction toward her office.

Jimmy caught up to her after he dropped her gear at the counter. “I still don’t understand why you need to take a class to help you talk to athletes.”

“Because, Jimmy, the game is changing,” she explained, frustrated. “It’s not just about the physical preparation, and if we want to broaden our customer base, we need to be able to give athletes the tools for all their needs.”

“But…psychology?”

Razor stopped at her office door and turned abruptly, causing him to almost run into her. “It’s important to understand the mentality of an athlete, maybe more so than their physicality. Remember when I first came back from San Diego, how much of a wreck I was?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Seeing a therapist helped me deal with all that was going on in my head with Mom’s death and…the other stuff.”

“But all you did was talk to this woman,” Jimmy pointed out.

“And sometimes that’s all athletes need, but I want to be able to do more,” Razor explained. “I want to help them. But I need to learn how to do it. Understand?”

Jimmy ducked his head. “Yeah, I do. Sorry.”

Razor patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. Sport psychology isn’t talked about a lot, but that’s changing. Which is why I’m taking this class.”

“Then I won’t keep you any longer,” Jimmy replied. “And I’ll do my best not to interrupt you for the next hour unless it’s an emergency.”

Razor released a breath as he walked away, then turned and entered her office. She quickly booted up her computer and logged into the Western University course website with a minute to spare.

Excitement coursed through her veins. True, it was only one class.

And while she would have preferred to take it in person, driving into Jonesboro for just one class three days a week, even with the highway, was too much of a time suck.

Best to ease into it and see how good her juggling was with running a business and course work, and then maybe next fall she’d take on more and make the trek to the college.

As green dots appeared next to the names listed on the roster, Razor rubbed her hands in anticipation.

“Here we go,” she whispered and dived headfirst into the first of many new tools she hoped to acquire.

* * *

Ashton Sharpe was a hot mess. After years of organizing study schedules around game schedules, you’d think she’d manage to get her act together.

Her second semester in the psychology doctorate program, and she was acting like a first-year undergrad instead of an almost thirty-year-old woman who’d been in school longer than most four-year prospects.

She’d been running late all day, with three psychology classes to teach, including an online course, graduate assistant coach duties on the softball team, and her own studies and dissertation research.

Her mind was exhausted just thinking about it.

Her morning Zoom meeting with her advisory committee was more of a forty-five-minute justification of her topic choice.

She signed off with them only to immediately turn around and sign in for the online course.

The next few hours were hazy, as she went from one building to another and stood in front of students, uttering words she hoped made sense.

By the time she made it to her three o’clock study hour, she was greeted with a 911 text from the coach of the softball team.

Ashton slowed her pace at the door reading Courtney Dyer, Head Coach of Hornet Softball.

The closed door was not a good sign. She smoothed down the strands of blond hair that’d escaped from her ponytail.

A quick smoothing of the wrinkles from her blouse and skirt, and she knocked lightly.

A soft “Come in” filtered through the door, and Ashton peeked inside.